


evanescence of warmth left by a snow trail

by snyders



Series: hyomozweek2020 [1]
Category: Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Banter, Broken Promises, M/M, Verbal Fight, ex-boyfriends hyomoz, hyomozweek2020, snow trails
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:29:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28198434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snyders/pseuds/snyders
Summary: “...Your kid,”he doesn’t know where to start, but if something had grabbed Hyoga’s attention, stopping him from taking another step, thanks for that.“Is that...yours?”“Yes,”came the answer, curt and likely Hyoga.Mozu, from where he’s left standing, shoes half buried by the snow, heart possibly frozen. Thinks whether to follow down the trail left by Hyoga’s steps on the freezing cold of December wondering if the direction would lead him to a place that will keep him warm. By the fireplace,maybe.When Mozu enters the place, the hushed chime of the bell hanging by the door immediately sends him in a turmoil of nostalgia and a thousand steps back to a distant memory.
Relationships: Hyouga/Mozu (Dr. STONE)
Series: hyomozweek2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2098170
Kudos: 4





	evanescence of warmth left by a snow trail

**Author's Note:**

> hello its the ungodly hour of the morning. first thing to know is that, i was giggling crazy while writing this riding the high of my 5 day streak of just writing.
> 
> also, happy hyomozweek2020, here's my entry for day 1. im sorry if this will come out as trash because i have gone like just 2 sessions of editing this fic because i crammed this shit over a day after publishing a work that was a wip for 6 months.
> 
> but anyways here it is!!

_“Through these hands you held, the promises made never came to be. Our fates lost in these promises that once were our future.”_

  
  
  
  
  


Mozu watches the white frost that coats the glass magnificently from the outside of his window seat during his four-hour bus ride on the way home in the chilly month of December.

Today is the day. The day that he’s going back to his province after three years of being absent on holidays in the premises of his own house.

A voice through the intercom announces that he’s five minutes away from his stop. He steps out of the bus. As he does, he’s hit by an air of extreme temperature with a hint of home. It’s even colder outside. He buries his gloved hand further on the pocket of his jacket seeking for warmth in its recesses while the other is wrapped around on the handle of a luggage in tow, tense.

Being a professional and a top model of his agency’s sport’s brand isn’t too bad. If he had not been too blinded by the pay with the amount alike of that to a mountain’s height, maybe, he should’ve not signed a contract shoved to his face by some sort of a company representative expert in smooth business talking in the first place if it means hardly getting off the hook and have his freedom seized away from him.

But Mozu at that time was a highschool student, naive and easy to take advantage of by adults, (and by anybody) or perhaps, he just wasn’t thinking right and it could’ve been that his brain’s too far gone to choose the fitting decisions. He’s always been like that kind of a boy. 

He had walked several meters now, and with the weather, and because he's Mozu, he’s dumb enough to refuse a ride from the stop because he said he’d wanted to take his time walking up the road of this town like he used to, forgetting to take the climate into consideration.

Aiming for the second block ahead of his sight—that if his memory serves him right—is where a convenience store resides assuming that the establishment is still standing there and running in pursuit for resting his aching legs and purchasing a hot pack. 

Seeing the illumination of a familiar worn out rectangular display name that is really in need of repair, a label in bold intimidating font from the outside of the convenience store, with a tuft of snow like shaved ice gathered above, Mozu couldn’t hide his mirth as the thing blinks softly at him.

When Mozu enters the place, the hushed chime of the bell hanging by the door immediately sends him in a turmoil of nostalgia and a thousand steps back to a distant memory.

He hears it then, the carefree hurried steps of a youth and along with its companion. Then he hears unidentifiable things smacking the ground. One or two—or _three_ , dropping. And the count doesn’t stop there, which Mozu assumes that it might’ve been the items knocked over like dominoes chain reaction. _A loud billowing of laughter_ , Mozu hears as well. A disapproving cold voice scolds the source of it, but it comes out too fond that makes Mozu strangely curious of what might’ve been the kind of relationship they have, rendering Mozu intrigued. 

On the farthest aisle of store, he couldn’t see well from the lined up aisles blocking his vision, but he could take in the sight of two heads sticking out: one, whose hair is a dark shade of brown, coiled stylishly, and next to it—when Mozu sees it, it quickens up his pulse as the voices of the two became muffled, quickly fading out like they have not been there in the first place. 

Upon the realization, Mozu was already walking towards the aisle with beauty products lined up. His pace is fast and large. He wasn’t even aware of it before he reached the section.

How _vivid._ And raw. He’s terrified by the phantom left of this place. 

As he sees what he’s been looking for at the farthest end of the aisle, he scoops a handful of heat packs and turns to pay for it. On the way heading for the counter, something from below smacked on his leg with force that is neither too strong nor too weak, halting him from doing so as he’s hit by— _a child?_ Mozu realizes in a trance.

“Kid, are you hurt?”

The little thing offers no reply or a reaction of any kind which worries Mozu a bit.

Inspecting for himself, Mozu crouches down to be at eye level with the adorable child, alarmed when he takes notice of its eyes that are too narrow for a little kid, and something whispers at Mozu that he’s seen it countless of times, had once loved stare at them from his past as well as the white locks of hair framing the kid’s face that juts out of the hood of his winter jacket. 

_That color._

_And those squinting eyes._

“Akira, I told you not to—,” someone emerges between the aisle and stops midway of his sentence when he’s locked eyes with Mozu, “—wander off alone .”

_And that man._

“Hi. It’s been three long years,” Mozu says stupidly.

The man snatches the small hand of the miniature reflection of his image. It terrifies Mozu to know.

As if he isn’t there present at all, as if he had not heard him speak, “We’re going home now.” The adult uttered to the kid paying no heed to Mozu’s crouching figure as they went for the door of the store getting out of this place. 

Mozu is still unmoving from his position earlier for his head to recollect nothing but dust on its crevices. He was just lucky enough to regain himself after a few seconds to catch up for the door, dropping his heat packs forgotten on the cold tiled floor of the store.

One of his arms already stretched itself to take hold of a wrist snugly even before hearing the chime of the door as it snaps back close.

“ _Hyoga_ ,” he breathes, answered by a harsh signal for him to let go. _He doesn’t_. 

Well, he wishes he did because it was swatted away, without mercy for him to let go completely. Now that kinda hurts.

First crunch of shoe against white. 

“...Your kid,” he doesn’t know where to start, but if something had grabbed Hyoga’s attention, stopping him from taking another step, thanks for that. “Is that...yours?”

Hyoga turns back to face him, one brow arched. Then stares down at the kid. The kid stares back. Hyoga locked eyes with Mozu.

“Yes,” came the answer, curt and likely Hyoga.

Receiving that information, Mozu has no idea what to do with it.

“But I thought you don’t date women.”

“And you once promise we’re going to start our own dojo together.” Hyoga shoots back, unfurling something on the pit of Mozu’s stomach that has him thinking, _I’m damned._

It’s true that Mozu has spoken of it, but he has not expected Hyoga to put it on his account. _Oh, of course he would,_ Mozu realizes, because he _is_ Hyoga. And he should’ve known better that his ex-boyfriend values promises above all. 

What keeps sticking to his mind like mud however, is that in a span of three years— _jesus,_ he could not have just produced an offspring _in just_ —

“But that _kid_ ,” he grits through his teeth as he’s about to stagger back so he defies it by stepping closer to Hyoga thinking it's the plausible thing to do in that situation, seeing the man’s face clearer as its creases shift to confusion.

Mozu, points a finger at the kid, “are you sure he’s really yours?” He didn’t mean to have the kid clutching to Hyoga’s side tighter by the way he’s said it. 

“H-he could be four or _five_ or _something,”_ he sputters. “ _You,”_ a pure speculation following after the other, “were you cheating on me while we’re still in a relationship three years ago because in such a _short_ time you couldn’t possibly—”

“Three years might be a short time for you because you were busy having the best time of your life pampered in the city,” Hyoga snips his sentence short by a statement leaving him rubbing his face in frustration.

“ _Best time of my life?,”_ he feels himself losing hold of his temper while feeling sorry for the boy who’s watching wordlessly. “ _You_ think I was having my ass _pampered_ in the city? I was crawling my way for work everyday there while you—”

“We’re not having a fight outside of this convenience store, Mozu. Be proper.” 

Hyoga’s audacity to pull that statement off without a crack to that composure made Mozu want to punch something hard on the spot. Or Hyoga’s face. But as angry as he is right now, he can’t bring himself to. Because that would scar Hyoga’s pretty face. It doesn’t deserve it. And Mozu doesn’t want that to happen.

“Well, we’re having one _right now._ ” He steps into Hyoga’s space, Hyoga steps back. 

A pause, Mozu takes a breath shakily, clenching his freezing fists on either of his side, “Three years ago, why weren’t you answering my calls?”

Mozu wants an answer, because maybe Hyoga should not have been too unfair. Maybe he could’ve been kinder to Mozu. In that way they— _he_ isn’t trying so hard to patch up things that are far from repairable.

The reply had Hyoga run a hand across his face as his shoulders heaved. Mozu noticed with a wild ringing on his hears that Hyoga's hand—his _left_ hand has one of his slender fingers gleaming with the presence of a ring.

Mozu staggers backwards, as if what he’s seeing is horror.

“You’re _married—”_

“Engaged.” 

And Hyoga _feels_ the need to correct him, Mozu doesn't get it. He could laugh. As if sparing him mercy picked from the mud.

“Then the _child_ —,” _isn’t yours, right? you were lying all along, right? you could’ve not given birth to such a thing, right?_

All of these stayed on the tip of his tongue, ground to ashes, played around like dough, then splayed on the ocean to be washed away on an island on the other side of the globe.

“Pre-marital sex is a thing.”

All energy seeps out of his body upon hearing that. 

Hyoga, who preaches about being proper every second of their relationship. _Hyoga,_ who wouldn’t even let him fuc— _do_ it when they had ripen from the age of boyhood, allowed himself to do it or be done by someone else?

Or Mozu deserves this punishment, this exhaustion that comes crashing on him right after arriving home. He’s numb; heart weary.

Afterall, he was the one who promised. A promise spoken on a first snow as he took Hyoga’s hand, now bound by a ring, warm in his own and all he ever thinks is that he would never feel snow or the chill and not fall in the thought of Hyoga completely; how he looks breathtaking under the snow fall that matches the color of his long silky hair, nose in a pretty shade of rose as the cold kisses the pale white skin. 

Mozu had tucked his silver locks behind his ears that time. Mozu had wanted to do that today too. But he doubts Hyoga would let him.

“You’re _foolish_ , Mozu.” _Oh, he truly is._

That was the first he’s ever heard Hyoga speak his name in three years. And maybe, if going home means he’s able to hear this from Hyoga again, even if laced by something broken, he would’ve gone home immediately right after arriving in the city three years ago _—three years ago,_ if only Hyoga had picked up his call. 

Hyoga sighs, starts picking up his son from the ground, hoisting him by the armpits to carry him, and mutters something under his breath that sounds like a goodbye.

Mozu, from where he’s left standing, shoes half buried by the snow, heart possibly frozen. Thinks whether to follow down the trail left by Hyoga’s steps on the freezing cold of December wondering if the direction would lead him to a place that will keep him warm. By the fireplace, _maybe._

He walks up the road, opposite of where Hyoga's headed.

//

Hyoga feels Akira stir in his arms and asks in a small voice, “Who is that dude just now, uncle?”

“Just one foolish jock, nephew,” he feels himself smile as the word rolls out of his mouth, as he always does when he used to call Mozu that.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! catch me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nanamiukyo?s=09)


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